Now Entering Addamsville

by Francesca Zappia

  “That worked?”

  “Why wouldn’t it?”

  I glanced at Sadie and Grim, then back at Artemis. “Your mom believes the excuses you give her?”

  “Of course she does. I don’t lie to her. I’m only doing it now because she’s afraid I’m going to get arrested again.” She paused for a deep breath. “I feel kind of bad about it, actually.”

  Sadie elbowed me in the ribs. “Learn something.”

  I swatted her away and motioned to the DMW van. “Let’s go disturb these moles digging around inside Grimmie’s house.”

  Artemis trailed after me, but so did Sadie and Grim. I wasn’t super pumped about marching up to this house with the whole Scooby gang in tow, but their presence might mellow Norm a bit. It was only me he had a problem with; a firestarter had once scorched his mailbox and half his front yard, and he still thought I’d done it.

  He had his eyes on us as we came up the sidewalk. When we entered the yard, he stormed down the front porch steps.

  “You kids need to get on,” he said. “Nothing here for you to see.”

  “We don’t want to see anything,” I said. “Did Chief Rivera tell you about our footage?”

  “She told me not to let you two near these people while they were in town.” He jabbed a finger at me and Artemis. “I don’t know what made you girls think it was okay to go running around a mine at night, but you’re not getting in this house.”

  “No.” I held my hands up. “We’re here for justice. They stole some footage from us last night and lied about it. Chief Rivera said she’d look into getting it back.”

  Norm looked from me to Artemis, and Artemis nodded her head quickly. Norm glanced at Sadie and Grim. Then back at me, hard, like he was trying to read my mind.

  “You’re telling the truth?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Norm leaned back and puffed up his chest. In my dealings with the Addamsville Police Department, I had learned many things about Norman Newall, but perhaps the three most important were these:

  1. He was a cop of Addamsville, not Harrisburg or Indianapolis or anywhere else, and his loyalty was to the people who lived here,

  2. He had a righteous and endearingly pure need to bring justice to those who have been wronged,

  And

  3. He likes you a lot better when you call him “sir.”

  “Wait here,” he said, heading toward the DMW van. Then he stopped and looked at us again. “And when I say ‘here,’ I mean right here. Do not move, you understand me?”

  “Yessir, Officer Newall.”

  He marched off.

  “That was promising!” Artemis bounced on the balls of her feet. “They won’t turn down a police officer.”

  “They already turned down a chief,” I said, but she ignored me.

  Voices came from behind us. “Screw the show; I would never film here, much less live here. Not after that stuff upstairs. Who knows how often they come here?”

  “Shut up for, like, five seconds, Lei—oh! Well, speak of the devil.”

  You know that feeling when a bug crawls on your shoulder and you can’t see it but you can feel the hairy legs tickling your nerve endings and it makes you want to peel your skin off? That is the feeling I got whenever Tad Thompson began to speak.

  He appeared in the doorway, all smug smirks and stupid hipster clothes, holding a photograph. Leila floated behind him with their coffee, looking interested but not nearly so ready to bite someone. She also dressed like a hipster, but I didn’t mind it as much. Probably because she didn’t wear it like it made her better than me.

  “We’re here for our card, thief,” I snapped, then remembered I’d meant to be polite. “Please.”

  Tad snorted. “What card? All the equipment is ours. We don’t need to steal footage from a bunch of rednecks. Besides, shouldn’t you be coming here to apologize? A lot of our fans are upset that we were attacked.” He nodded across the street, where attentions and cameras had now been turned on us. “We’re going to put that in our episode, of course. We’re Dead Men Walking! We seek out danger as only the bravest can. A town where the ghosts and the inhabitants are hostile is so on-brand it hurts.”

  Leila made a noise. Tad’s expression slipped into annoyance. “Not now, okay?” he said. “None of that feminist shit when we’re not on the camera. I literally cannot take another second of it.”

  Leila rolled her eyes and walked away.

  Tad turned back to us. “You’re not getting your footage back. Drop it. You’re a bunch of small-town hicks and you wouldn’t know what to do with that footage if you had it.”

  “You watched it?” Artemis said.

  His lip curled. “Of course I watched it. Watched it, saved it, made copies of it. I wanted to see what kind of damage it’d do to us if it got back to you. We don’t look great on it, that’s for sure, but you didn’t only shoot us, did you?” He smiled then, showing all his teeth. “I don’t know what that thing was in the mines, but I’m going to make it huge. Angry townspeople, creatures in the mines, old mansions burning down—this place really was the gold mine everyone said it would be.”

  Now Grim was the one making noises; he sounded like a wounded deer when Tad said “old mansions.” Tad gave him a strange look and said, “Do I know you?”

  Grim clamped his mouth shut and receded into his hair. Recognition dawned across Tad’s face. He snapped his fingers on both hands.

  “Oh! You’re the guy! The—” He motioned to the house. “The Grimshaw guy! They told me about you. They said someone still lived in town, and that he looked like a scarecrow with a dead cat for hair.”

  Grim recoiled. The whites showed all the way around Sadie’s eyes.

  “I’m thinking about investigating here,” Tad said. “The stories are amazing. Thirteen ghosts and treasure inside? I know you all have been using this rathole as your hideout, but we could make a documentary about it. Then, who knows, maybe that old creep in the woods will let us use it as a lake house.”

  “You don’t belong here,” Sadie said. “This house belongs to Grim.”

  Tad laughed. “I don’t see his name on it. Well, legally, anyway.” He looked Grim up and down. “Maybe you could buy it off Forester. Doesn’t look like you have the money on you, though—or is it in your other jumpsuit?”

  I felt the shift in the air by my left shoulder. Sadie blurred past me. Her hands were an inch from Tad’s face when Grim caught her arms and yanked her back. Grim was deceptively strong, but not strong enough to hold back two hundred and thirty pounds of Sadie in a building rage, so I threw my back into her, hissing, “First Dad, now you—I thought I was supposed to be the one who had to be stopped from doing stupid things!”

  Tad, gathering himself against the house’s doorframe, stared at us with disbelief on his face and his eyebrows nearly in his hair. “I don’t know why I’m surprised,” he said. “You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”

  “Hey!” Artemis stepped in front of me. “You’re being a real jerk right now, you know that? Why do you have to go around insulting people all the time?”

  I shoved Sadie off the porch. Grim towed her back to the street. Then I nudged Artemis behind me and stared Tad down. “What are you talking about, it’s our ‘hideout’?”

  Tad held up the picture he was carrying. “Your mom? It’s cute.”

  In the picture, two girls, probably around eight or nine, sat on a porch step with a dog. One girl had dark hair, one had light, but they were clearly sisters. Their eyes were a washed-out sepia, almost the same light color as their skin. They looked like me, like Sadie, like Artemis. I snatched the picture out of Tad’s hands. He let me. On the back, in scrawled handwriting, was the year 1983.

  “There were more photos all over, but I didn’t have time to look through the rest of your junk upstairs,” Tad went on. “I’m sure it’s just as sentimental.”

  I stared at the picture. I had never seen pictures of Mom so young. I had never really see
n pictures of Mom.

  Norm’s disgruntled bark flew across the yard. He appeared next to us a moment later, worked up and puffing. “What’s going on here? Are they bothering you, Mr. Thompson?”

  “No, not at all,” Tad said. “They were about to go.”

  Norm glanced back to the street, where Sadie and Grim stood, calmer now, then gave Artemis and me a long, hard glare. I tucked the photo into my pocket, held up my hands, and said, “Swear to God, Officer Newall, we aren’t here to start trouble.”

  Norm waited another moment before jerking his head toward the street. “Get out of here. They don’t have your memory card. Producer confirmed they went through everything they had, twice, and didn’t find anything out of the ordinary.”

  “You can’t believe that.”

  “Go!” Norm jabbed a finger at the street. Artemis dragged me away. I looked back only once to see Tad standing behind Norm’s shoulder. He winked.

  When we were back at Grim’s car, I took the photo out of my pocket and showed it to Sadie. “Tad found this inside the house. He thought it was my hideout. He said there were other things inside. Who would have a picture of Mom inside Grimshaw House?”

  Sadie’s eyes widened, her eyebrows pressing down hard over them. “It could be coincidence. Whatever else is in there—”

  “But this was the one Tad found. It was easy to find. He thinks everything up there is mine. What if there are more? What if—” There was so much about her I didn’t know. “What if there’s more about her in there? Who would put a picture of Mom inside Grimshaw House?”

  “Anyone,” Sadie said, but a cloud had passed over her expression. Doubt. “It doesn’t matter. We can’t get in.”

  “We can get in,” I said, “People used to get in here all the time.”

  Sadie and Artemis reacted at the same time.

  “You want to trespass again—”

  “—and got horribly injured!”

  Sadie took me by the arm and pulled me aside, but I got words out before she did. “I get it. Whatever you’re going to say to me, I know. And you’re right. We shouldn’t do it.”

  Her lips pressed tight together, eyebrows furrowing. “So why’d you suggest it?”

  “Because it’s Mom.”

  Because the harder I tried to ignore the mysteries of this town, the heavier they weighed, and there was one that weighed more than any other.

  Sadie didn’t speak right away, either, and that told me enough. I held up the photo. “Did you ever see a picture of her? Do we have any pictures of her?”

  Her gaze flicked from me to the photo.

  I pushed again. “She went into the woods that night for a reason. You know it’s not teenagers keeping weird old pictures in Grimshaw House. Tad said there were more.”

  Her eyebrows tilted up.

  “I’m not stupid,” I said. “It wasn’t lack of common sense that got me caught in the mines, or anywhere else. I know the risks. I think the risks are worth this. To see.”

  If I’d had my way, I would have gone without her, but if she was going to start monitoring my coming and going, then she was going to have to come with me. Her hand finally slid off my arm. She scraped her fingers through her hair, then turned back to Artemis and Grim. “Grimmie. It’s your house. You decide if we go in.”

  Grim gave her a bewildered blink, apparently as surprised as I was that I’d actually managed to convince her. “I’d rather we break into it than anyone else.”

  “Oh god, this is a terrible idea.” Artemis dropped her arms to her sides and gave me a look. A there’s a firestarter on the loose and you want to waste time with Grimshaw House look.

  “You don’t have to come,” I said.

  She scoffed. “I have a chance to go into Grimshaw House. I can’t pass that up. Besides, if there are documents about the Aberdeen girls in there, there might be something about other stories from around town. Look at the photo—that already tells us something. That story about Daisy makes a lot more sense.”

  I looked again. Pit bull. Brown spot over one eye. Notch out of the ear.

  “Daisy was Mom’s dog?” Sadie said.

  “That’s probably where the story about Daisy leading children to safety came from. Our moms were found in the park when they reappeared, on the edge of the woods. Supposedly it was their dog that found them.”

  I looked again at the picture. Both Mom and Aunt Greta had light-colored eyes in it, maybe hazel or light brown. Mom’s eyes had always been black. So had Aunt Greta’s. That meant this picture was before. Before knowing. Before hunting.

  “Tonight,” Sadie said, jaw set. “We’re going inside tonight.”

  “We can’t stay late,” Artemis said. “I have to get up early for the homecoming parade tomorrow.”

  “Seriously? For a parade?” I threw up my hands.

  “Grim.” Sadie reached out to smooth his hair. “Are you sure you want to do this? You don’t have to come, either.”

  Grim didn’t answer for a moment. He was looking across town, where the woods hid the base of Piper Mountain, and the radio tower blinked red in the growing dark. Only when he focused faraway like this did he seem sharp and completely alert, like a dog honed in on a distant scent. “Do you ever feel,” he said, “like there’s something wrong with the world, but you don’t know what it is?”

  “Sure we do, Grimmie,” I said, patting his arm, “but existential dread is just another part of life.”

  Grim laughed and said, “Yes, I’m sure. I’ll go.”

  I looked to Artemis. “Going to lie to get out of the house this time? Momma Wake is going to find out eventually.”

  “No. She’ll be asleep by the time I leave. I do have ways to get sneak out that she doesn’t know about, but more importantly, even if I do lie, my mom doesn’t snoop around. I know you think she’s the worst person on the planet, but she can be really cool. She trusts me.”

  That must be nice, I thought, to have someone who knows why you do the things you do.

  I sniffed at Artemis. “Tell her to stop calling me a criminal and maybe I’ll believe it.”

  “Stop behaving like a criminal and maybe she will.”

  “Damn.” I spun back toward the Chevelle, hands up in surrender. “Touché.”

  15

  When I was thirteen, the Chevelle was found on the northern edge of Black Creek Woods, near the abandoned train cars. The driver’s door hung open, as if Mom had gotten out in a hurry. She’d left a trail into the woods at almost the exact location where she and Aunt Greta had been found as girls, but there were no signs of a struggle.

  The police followed that trail into the trees until it went cold. No dogs could catch her scent. No amount of canvassing revealed any clues. I had never known Mom to be particularly fond of Black Creek Woods, and being one of the Aberdeen girls, it was no wonder why. But the second disappearance had been willing. She had been hunting, I knew, because there was no other reason she would have left us like that. I thought she would have at least left clues for me, but the photo from Grimshaw House was the first I’d ever seen.

  Staring up at the flaking back of Grimshaw House, I felt a wealth of secrets hiding inside the walls, waiting. The backyard was a dead jungle right down to the shore of Addams Lake, the house barely fending off the wilds with the remains of an old back porch. A few tourists and DMW fans still camped out front, but Rivera had kept Norm parked by the curb, so they hadn’t come any closer.

  Sadie kneeled on one side of me, Artemis on the other. Grim’s lanky form folded into the shadows behind us. We’d crept along the lakeshore from the foot of the bluffs, behind the long row of Goldmine houses, avoiding homeowners and security lights. Artemis cupped a hand over her phone to block the light as she checked the time. 12:34 a.m. When we were sure there was no movement nearby, Sadie let out a long sigh and began making her way toward the door.

  She’d been the one to answer the question of how to get in. Her time with the Birdies had not been forgotten af
ter all, and she still knew where that experience was when she needed to bring it out and dust it off. She crept silently up the porch and kneeled by the lock of the vine-covered door, barely a shadow on the moonless night. Several quiet moments passed. The click of the lock opening was barely audible, and Sadie held the handle with one hand while she pried back some of the vines with the other. Then she pushed the door open slowly enough that its rust-stuck groaning could be mistaken for the old house settling.

  Another several seconds. No movement. I tapped Artemis and Grim on the shoulders and led the way to the door.

  We slipped inside. Sadie closed it behind us. Artemis’s phone flashlight, pointed at the floor, gave us enough light to see one another. We stood in the kitchen, and from the animal droppings and dead flies at our feet, I was glad I couldn’t see the rest of it. The air was thick with must and the smell of something dead.

  Sadie was already tense. Not only was she three hours past her bedtime, she was in the creepiest house in Addamsville. Sadie did not do creepy. She hadn’t even worn her combat boots, which might have helped a little; she’d once told me she never felt afraid when she wore those boots, because wearing those boots meant she was the thing to be feared.

  “Ugh,” she said now, huddled tight between me and Grim. “It’s too quiet in here.”

  “There’ll be some light from the street,” I said, “but if you have to use yours, no pointing it at the windows. Tad said he found the picture upstairs, so that’s where we should go first. Grim, is there anything else you want to look at while we’re here?”

  Grim took a moment to answer; he was frowning past me, into one of the front rooms.

  “I can look around down here,” he said. “You all go upstairs. I’ll meet you.”

  Sadie squeezed his arm. Artemis turned off her light.

  The Goldmine houses all followed the same Victorian Gothic layout, so Artemis led the way down a narrow hallway off the kitchen, past a dark doorway that led down to what I assumed was the basement, and through a living room to the steep staircase to the second floor. The upstairs rooms were mostly empty save for a few old armchairs, a bed frame without a mattress, and a vanity whose mirror was crusted over with age. In the master bedroom, Artemis almost stepped on a decomposing raccoon, and I had to clap a hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming.